


Blood on Bone for a Lover's Burial

by heget



Series: his coat was of a myrtle shade [6]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Aegnor/Andreth is yet again the underlying background underpinning but not On-Screen, Aftermath of Violence, Angst, Canon Death, Dagor Bragollach, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post Forest Fire, Unrequited Love, dead bodies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 15:16:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20726324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heget/pseuds/heget
Summary: After the Dagor Bragollach, Wise-woman Andreth demands that their dead be buried. Her great-nephews, Baragund and Belegund, escort her to the ruins of Barathonion, to search for bones.





	Blood on Bone for a Lover's Burial

**Author's Note:**

> Both a sequel to [Hold Fast Err Night Comes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1259317/chapters/2592904) and prologue to [The Ring](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12329583), with direct ties to my other Andreth stories.

Baragund once thought his great-aunt, Andreth, the strongest woman he would ever meet, and he still wished to believe so. The hero worship of a child had birthed this admiration, but the maturity of a man who knew wisdom and conviction were the source of true strength had solidified this belief. Baragund knew that none could surpass or daunt his great-aunt. He knew this like the rising of the sun, the heat of a fire. Yet the flames that died in the wake of the Battle of Sudden Flame limited not just to those purely physical, for to look into his great-aunt Andreth’s eyes was to see a flame extinguished. There was a frailness to his great-aunt that not even her immense age had afflicted upon her. Before the Battle of Sudden Flame, Great-Aunt Andreth had been old, but never seemingly conquered by her age. As a child, foolishly, Baragund thought death would be ever too afraid to come for her. Now Andreth stood, still disdaining to lean her bodyweight on the cane that Baragund’s father had gifted to her last Midsummer, and argued with Uncle Barahir and Aunt Emeldir over the proper course of action now that most of Dorthonion had been devoured by flames. Her voice was as loud and clear as it had been when Baragund had been a boy, but there was a new brittleness to its timbre and a weariness to the set of her shoulders. A tree, hollowed out by disease and rot, still upright until a high wind would come to topple it, that was Great-Aunt Andreth. Baragund wished he did not feel like the most rank of traitors to judge his great-aunt with anything less than all-encompassing admiration and awe, but he knew her best of her surviving kin and could see the change.

Uncle Barahir wished to stay and fight, to try to rebuild. Great-Aunt Andreth, a bony arm splayed out to point to the ash-fields that remained of their homes and the oily black clouds that still billowed from the castle to the west, called that hope foolishness. As Wise-woman and eldest kin, Great-Aunt Andreth had dispensed advice for the chieftains of Bëor, starting with her father, then brother, and lastly her nephew. In some ways, his people said, it was Andreth who ruled the People of Bëor, and they had nodded at the righteousness of that, for she was wise and firm-willed. Uncle Barahir looked pained to be publicly disagreeing with her. 

When the Great Fever swept through Dorthonion, killing many including Chief Boromir and Baragund’s mother, Great-Aunt Andreth had been the one to take in Baragund and his brother while their father recovered from the illness and buried their mother. Baragund’s family situation had been common during that summer of the plague. Many had been made orphans and many made new caretakers like Great-Aunt Andreth. Baragund and his brother spent that terrible summer exploring the nooks of her cottage to distract themselves from grief and fear and helping her with her Wise-women duties in the way young boys could - that is to say they were underfoot more than aid. She had been the one to lead her brother, Bregor, through that terrible summer of his first days as chief, to give him strength and hope. She had nurtured and safeguarded everyone’s hope. Andreth promised the plague would pass, lives be rebuilt, and that Bregor would carry his people successfully through the harvest and winter. Now, her words spoke of defeat. In the ashes of the Dagor Bragollach, there was no hope of surviving the coming winter. And that Great-Aunt Andreth dared to voice this awful fact felt like a cruel betrayal. The only part more shocking was that Uncle Barahir was obdurately disagreeing with her.

Exhausted with the repetitions of words, of the same arguments on if there was time to rebuild, if there was enough seed stock and livestock to have anything to support themselves in the spring and how soon Morgoth’s forces might return and make any rebuilding futile, Baragund left in search of his cousin. He found Beren with Urthel, the two young men carefully melting glue to attach feathers to fresh arrows. A stack of whittled arrow shafts lay at Beren’s feet, and Baragund picked one up and inspected it. “Where were you able to find them?”

“The fires didn’t get up into the pines,” Beren mumbled, “not all of ‘em. We hid there, during the worst of it, when Ma had us evacuate.”

“You did well,” Baragund praised, repeating his own litany of soothing words. For the last few days, ever since his Uncle reunited them with their families and the rest of Dorthonion’s remaining civilians, Baragund had been trying to reassure his cousin that the young man had performed his duties admirably. Beren had helped to protect his people, had done his best to keep them safe. But his cousin was as transparent as the lake on a clear day, and Beren blamed himself for every loss of life and house. “My daughter would not be alive without you,” Baragund stressed. 

His cousin looked up from his project. “Great-Aunt Andreth says we should leave.”

“Yes,” Baragund said, “and your father hasn’t convinced her otherwise. I think your mom is half-convinced.”

“What do you think?” Beren asked.

Baragund had no answer for his cousin; he felt only emptiness when he thought of the question and the weighty consequences. The only solid thought that he did have was a chilling relief that he was not chieftain, that his uncle was one to carry the burden of leadership. What was most frightening for Baragund was the dawning realisation that if the day came that it would be his turn to lead his people, as his father, Bregolas, and grandfather, Bregor, had done, that he would not have the wisdom and strength of Great-Aunt Andreth to support him. His sister Beleth had refused to take the training of the Wise-women, so his counselor would be Arthad’s sister, Glennil. She had not yet been found; most assumed that she died in the fires.

“Eilinel wants to stay,” Urthel said, speaking of his sister.

“And Gorlim,” Beren added, speaking of his best friend. This made the large and grim-faced Urthel grunt with displeasure, for he had not yet decided if he approved of the young man whom had successfully courted Eilinel. For her happiness Urthel begrudged outward acceptance.

Another sobering thought for Baragund, for his daughter was no longer a young child, and he knew it would only be a few scant years until some callow boy came wishing to court Morwen.

“I think it’s melted now,” Beren said, handing the cup to Urthel. “Call me when they decide,” Baragund’s cousin said as he inspected trimmed pieces of feather. “I’ll try to make at least a good sheaf of arrows for you and Belegund. I can do that. Ma pulled me off fence-building, and Urthel already finished with firewood.”

“We don’t have enough yet,” Beren’s friend grumbled and held out a trimmed arrow shaft for Beren to start gluing on the fletching.

Seeing that they would not be distracted from their task, Baragund turned on his heels and trudged back into the hall to listen to his chieftain and Wise-woman quarrel at each other.

A new discussion was underway when Baragund re-entered, and the change of topic disoriented Baragund until he found his brother standing with arms crossed in the corner. “Bel,” he hissed, “what are they-”

“Aunt An’ finally agreed it’s too late in the year to migrate, but she got Uncle Barahir to concede the necessity of sending some of our people away to safety. They’re storing the debate on where would be best, either Estolad or Brethil or over with kin in Dor-lómin, until we get messengers with updates on how those lands fair over the winter. For all we know, the communities were wiped out in the Battle. Minas Tirith on Tol Sirion is holding out, so that’s welcome news. And we need to start a tally of who survived. Nobody expects any more stragglers.” Belegund turned back towards the debate. “Now Aunt Emeldir wants advice on what food stock to supplement us over the winter -though if we have places to store any harvest is another dilemma- and what we can do to help.”

“Anything useful?” Baragund asked.

“Well, it turns out that you _can _eat tree bark, at least the inner part during the spring. So we have that to look forward to.” 

Andreth noticed the two brothers standing together and excused herself from the meeting, waving away old Dagnir who held out her cane with a fierce scowl. “Burn it for firewood. We’ll need it once as the charcoal runs out.” The expression on her face as she marched over to the brothers made Baragund and Belegund remember their terror when they were caught misbehaving that summer that Andreth watched over them. “I have a task for the two of you,” she said, and Baragund was half-afraid she was about to reach up and pull them both by the ear. Belegund must have had a similar thought, for he immediately uncrossed his arms and smiled down at their great-aunt.

“Command and it shall be done,” Belegund said.

“I need you to escort me to the ruins of Barathonion.”

“What?” Baragund and Belegund hollered as one voice.

“We should not leave before recovering the bones,” Great-Aunt Andreth said in her new brittle voice. “They should be buried, your father’s bones. And theirs, our lords.” Her breath hitched, and if there had been an emptiness where light once shone in her grey eyes, now there was the gaping darkness that the elves spoke of when describing the great monster Ungoliant. “We cannot leave their bones to be gnawed on by the Enemy’s wolves.” She spoke as if she saw the wolves before her, her limbs stiff with fear’s imitation of rigor mortis. Instantly Baragund and Belegund agreed with her to banish the desolation in her eyes.

Their swift and vocal pledge drew the attention of their uncle. Barahir excused himself from the meeting to demand knowledge of what his nephews and aunt were plotting, and he grew displeased at their answer. “Folly, Aunt An.”

“I won’t leave them unburied,” Great-Aunt Andreth snapped, looking as if she regretted relinquishing her cane for the missed opportunity to smack her brother’s youngest child with it.

“Naturally I wish to bury my brother, Bregolas,” Barahir said. “Because of my affection as his younger brother, even if he was not my Chief. But I am Chief now, and I must think of my people’s safety first, as my brother did.” Uncle Barahir’s body language and voice was harsh and lordly as he spoke, no longer Baragund’s uncle but that of his commander.

Baragund thought of his younger brother and if on some awful day in the future Belegund would be forced to bury him and then set aside his mourning. The only worse scenario would be if Belegund predeceased him. Or his younger cousin Beren, which Baragund had feared might have been truth when they first returned to the high hills of Ladros and seen all the homesteads burned, when Uncle Barahir rushed home knowing not if his family had survived. Or if he was forced to bury his Morwen or Belegund’s young Rían. Mercy of the Weeper, he prayed, let his daughter outlive him. 

“You cannot command me otherwise in this, Barahir,” Great-Andreth said. “By my hands shall my lords be buried, and be thankful I go not alone. I will do this before the snows come, so that at least a hand of a mourner has covered them, and I _ will _ do it alone if you forbid the boys to come with me.”

A father for more than a decade he was, yet ‘boy’ he remained in Great-Aunt Andreth’s eyes. Even the elves saw him as a man grown. 

Barahir sighed with defeat. “Guard our Wise-woman. Go to Barathonion, but do not tarry. Stay not when the night begins to fall.”

“Your will we obey, Chief,” Belegund said with formal hand held aloft. Baragund copied his brother. Belegund had always possessed the knack for lordly manners. Baragund followed his brother’s lead whenever possible to avoid worrying over comportment and when to switch to formal tone. He needed his brother. Once more he marveled that his uncle had not broken down weeping over his father’s death, at least not publicly. Baragund had the night before, and Belegund held his hands through the worst of the sorrowful tears. It was the summer of the Great Fever come again, made more terrible.

“What task is this?” Gildor asked, his shield mate Ragnor shadowing him. Belatedly Baragund realized that their conversations had switched almost at random between Taliska and Sindarin and at a volume that others could have also overheard. “What does the Wise-woman plan?”

Ragnor folded his massive arms across his chest, looking as much like an upright well-groomed bear as he was wont to, and intoned, “Gildor and I shall go with thee.”

“No, you won’t,” Barahir commanded, “I need you here. But lend them your ponies. It’s too great a distance to make Wise-woman Andreth walk.”

Gildor grunted. “‘Course, Chief.”

Gildor and Ragnor’s homestead had been one of the fortunate ones, barely touched by the ravages of flame. Their herd had fled the flames, and though thirsty and exhausted, they had not lost an animal. Gildor left to fetch three ponies whose strength had recovered to handle the short journey while Ragnor bowed.

Baragund thanked his friends. 

Great-Aunt Andreth grumbled and glared at Barahir, a spark of fire once more animating her eyes. For a moment Baragund could pretend that she would recover, that her hollowness was the grief that everyone faced. Morwen’s mother had died on the birthing bed, and having faced terrible grief and how one survived it, Baragund knew pain of burying family and how it could be shouldered even when the weight seemed unbearable.

Ah. Baragund finally connected the extinguishing of Great-Aunt Andreth’s flames to the memory of that summer and the secret that his brother and he had fumbled into. Timidly he placed a hand on her shoulder, feeling the bone beneath the soft tartan shawl. “We will bury them proper, Aunt An. All’em. It’s what you do for kin.”

Not all had been kin. Hearts, Baragund knew, would still mourn as if were in truth.

Before the three rode off, the brothers and their great-aunt needed to give their farewells to family. When they rode off with Uncle Barahir to inspect the eastern borders- a choice of fortuitous chance that placed them close enough to the Fens of Serech to rescue King Finrod but too far away to come to Barathonion’s aid- Baragund and Belegund bade their family farewell. This time, though the danger was lessened, the fear was sharper and the tears flowing.

His brother, Belegund, cupped his wife and daughter’s cheeks with both hands, one after another, to kiss their foreheads and promise to return. Rían, almost too heavy to be held in her mother’s arms, reached tearfully for her father. Belegund held her crying cheeks, thumbs rubbing away the tears, and kissed her forehead a second time. Baragund mimicked the gesture with his own daughter. Morwen grimaced and rubbed at her brow after he kissed it, scowling up at him. 

“Worry not for me,” she told him in her most serious voice, desperate to sound like the grown woman she thought she must be. Fourteen years old and stubborn. 

When he first held her in his arms, Baragund had wished with all his heart that his tiny Morwen would grow to become like the woman he most admired. Great-Aunt Andreth refused to allow anyone to honor her in names, making both nephews vow not to name their children for her. Instead Baragund promised to honor his late mother, thus Morwen was the babe called. A tiny girl, born of parents too young, entering the world too soon. But now so strong, his Morwen. He stared at her and wondered if she too would become hollowed out by grief as Great-Aunt Andreth had.

“Listen to your aunts,” he told her, “and watch your cousin. You have made me proud, Daughter.” His smile quivered, and he knew Morwen could see how he faltered. 

Beren handed over full quivers, and as Baragund thanked him, he came to the realization -one that he should have made sooner- that his cousin was a man now. There was stubble on Beren’s cheeks, and he was taller than Belegund. His mature eyes were perhaps the saddest reality, next to the hollowed-out resolution of Great-Aunt Andreth. 

Great-Aunt Andreth gave no one a private farewell, only a solemn nod to her single surviving nephew and his son. She had covered her hair with shawl and mantle, her Wise-woman’s crown long abandoned, the branches burned for kindling. Stone-like she stood, dry and hard eyes turning ever impatient towards the thick black smoke masking the peak of Foen. In her silence did she chide Baragund and his brother for delaying their departure while expressing her magnanimous sympathy towards their plight as husbands and fathers. Andreth’s silences were eloquent. 

Gildor led ponies saddled for their use, his eyes a silent plea to accompany them. Baragund hugged his friend, cheeks pressed close, and whispered, “If we do not come back before noon tomorrow, let not my cousin sneak out to search for us alone. You know Beren; he will try.” 

* * *

The pine forests were layers of gray crusted earth and blacked poles with stripped branches, color found only in spots of still smoldering orange embers. Those still-burning spots of earth sang and crackled, unsettling the ponies. The forest ringing what had once been his home village should not look so foreign to his eyes, yet this could not be denied. There should have been a stream to follow, but Baragund could not hear it.

Barathonion, the central fortress of the Lords of Dorthonion, was a stone complex in the shadow of Foen’s white peak. The mountain was clear to see behind the fire-blackened trees. They picked a path between the burnt trees with the mountain as their lodestone until the forest cleared and the ground sloped down into a wide valley. Here Belegund searched for the road that should have been easy to spot, and having lost it in the ash, shrugged his shoulders in defeat. “Ride on,” Great-Aunt Andreth barked, kicking her pony back into a brisk walk. “The castle stones were overthrown, not moved to a new location. We know where the fortress is. Was.”

“Was it some new war engine of the enemy that toppled the walls?”

“No,” Andreth said. “Elf magic. Final defenses. Our lords would not have left the fortress standing for the enemy to claim it, if they knew we had no chance of reclaiming it. This land is lost to us, Nephews. The trees might regrow, but we cannot be saved if we stay here. It’s time to leave the fields before the wolves come. Sow poison into our farewell feast, as the oldest songs say, but do not stay.”

“And yet our task,” Baragund muttered.

“We tarry for our dead.”

Tarry too long and join them, Baragund thought, thinking of the deadline imposed by their chieftain.

The sun was low, but the sky was still a gray tinged with blue instead of red, though diluted to the palest imitation of its true color by the smoke. Beautiful almost in its bleakness- but reminding Baragund of a cloth with all of its dye washed out or faded away, an ill omen for any hope of life. In such a sky Great-Aunt Andreth’s lack of hope was validated. Therefore Baragund loathed it.

Belegund looked up at the pale sky. “We have time still ‘til sundown. Hurry; we’re almost to Barathonion.”

Crows rancorously proclaimed the location, the black birds the brightest life in the silent grayness, their feeding calls a replacement for the noises of life that should have rung out from the fortress. The walls and tower that should have been their landmark was no more, just a large demolished pile of stone at the center of an uneven ruinous landscape. What was once green fields spread out in speckled, disorderly gray and black. Small columns of smoke rose from the ever-present patches of lingering embers. The farming homesteads that should have ringed the road and fortress were as destroyed as Baragund’s home village, a few smoldering black walls or surviving fence posts to show where homes and industry once sat. Here Baragund found the road for their ponies to traverse, but as it was piled high with the bodies of slain men and animals, he disdained the road to lead his great-aunt and brother across the burnt-out fields towards the ruined fortress. The small hap-hazzardly scattered mounds across the fields were the corpses of men and orcs and horses, some mounds higher than others, and most of them mercifully covered by a thin layer of gray ash that blurred their features from a distance. Metal from fallen armor or weapons that should have reflected in the light could not, covered by the ash. The charnel smell was quashed beneath the overbearing wood-ash and smoke and a lingering sulfuric smell that Baragund wagered was the distinctive odor of dragonfire.

The bodies that they searched for would not be found out here in the fields but somewhere within the fallen stones of the fortress. No survivors were there to be able to proclaim where the lords of Dorthonion and Ladros had finally fallen in battle, but Baragund knew that his father and elven lords had died towards the end, somewhere in the heart of this devastation.

Great-Aunt Andreth’s eyes, dead and gray as the ash around them, focused like a starving crow on those stones. There they would find their dead, if such a task could be accomplished. 

* * *

The dead grew too high against the outer ring of fallen stones to trust the ponies to find safe footing, and they needed to dismount and climb. Belegund helped Great-Aunt Andreth to hobble her mount so that it would not wander far. A more distasteful ascent Baragund could not imagine, and he focused on helping his great-aunt find secure footing on fallen mortar and stone, shoving away pieces of hacked limbs and ash-covered armor so that they need not step on corpses to climb into what had once been the outer courtyard. Sections of the wall still stood like a crone’s remaining teeth. Belegund scouted ahead, stringing his bow and pulling one of Beren’s fresh arrows ready to check that no surviving orc or wolf hid behind in its shadows. “No one!” he shouted.

“They’ll come, the wolves, come to eat him,” Andreth murmured, too softly for Baragund to hear. 

A staircase remained standing, but the floors to where it once led had fallen away. The steps led into nothingness. Baragund could see an armored-clad skeleton draped across the lower steps, but the style of the armor was that of Angband. Whether the dead that surrounded them were that of men or orc -burnt and half-buried by rumble- was all that could be distinguished at a glance.

“Start searching,” Andreth commanded.

The crows and other scavengers had picked the charred flesh off of the bones, and what remained were cracked fire-darkened armor, charcoal and ash, some bones that still vaguely resembled the outlines of the bodies that they had once been, and the smell. The smell was the worst, now that Baragund was close enough to the remains.

It was impossible to tell which body was his father, or the elven lords. “He was my father,” Baragund cried, “How can I not tell where he lies, which body is his? How will we bury him with honor?”

“You will,” Andreth assured him.

The sun began to set as they searched, shadows lengthening across the gray. Under Barathonion’s fallen stones, Baragund and Belegund found the bodies of elves and mortal men, swords and axes still sharp and some which they recognized by decoration on hilt or blade, thus labeling the owner. Those identified bodies and pieces of bone they pulled from the rumble as best they were able, stacking them with a modicum of respect in the clearest portion of the central courtyard. They had not the time to linger as to stack a cairn for everyone, but to leave their dead jumbled in with the ruins and dead orcs sat ill with Bregolas’s sons. As Wise-woman of the Bëorians, Andreth spoke quiet, reverent words over the dead, biding their souls travelled swiftly to the Doomsman’s Halls.

The crows ignored their efforts. Baragund tried to not read mocking in their voices and took pleasure that the carrion birds ate freely from the bodies of orcs as well as men.

“Nelmir’s arm-cuffs,” Belegund called out, his own arms and face covered with dark ash and the powdery remains of stone mortar. “Brother, do these not look like the bracers that Nelmir wore? The gemstones are the same color. I think this body is his.”

“Place him with the others, if thou can,” Baragund called. He crawled over a clothing chest, the wood oddly almost untouched by fire, to uncover another body. Long hair, no armor, features destroyed by fire. “Any sign of our father?”

“None!”

The shadows were long enough to signal that the sun would soon be beyond the horizon. Even without their promise to their uncle, neither Baragund nor Belegund wished to be near these ruins at dusk. 

“The vows,” Great-Aunt Andreth was whispering to herself, staring forlornly at the bones. “Flesh become one, my heart be yours, your blood be mine. The old wedding vows.” In her grief she had bitten her bottom lip enough to draw blood, and she wiped it with the back of a bony hand. It stood bright red against the pale flesh and gray ash as she sifted through the rubble, gingerly searching for discernible pieces of skeletons. Soon ash and dirt covered the smear of blood, the red disappearing into this world of gray and black. 

Belegund brought her helmets, searching for one with a familiar crest. He would leave the heads and other gruesome remains. The smashed helms covered in char and ash were plain enough to discern the origins of the wearer, if man or orc or elf.

“There are many helms like this over in that corner,” Belegund said. He led Great-Aunt Andreth over to the spot, her thin elbow held gently in his much larger hands, helping her balance as she knelt. “Ours, thou can tell. And the feather-shaped plate-mail of the lords, the chest-pieces that they wore with the ring-mail arms and legs. Not the fancy mail with gold, but definitely the armor from across the sea. I think their bodies might be there. Else they are deep beneath the stones. Many are, and we have no hope of pulling them out.”

“No,” Andreth whispered. “No hope.”

“You wish to leave?” Belegund asked in formal register, stiffening his grief behind the politest of the elven tongue. His choice of language was a mistake, Baragund saw instantly, for he saw how Great-Aunt Andreth flinched as if from a heavy blow. Too cruel a reminder of whom she searched for and could not find. Her hand pulled away from the bones, thin fingers curling around a loose ring of chainmail and pulling it up with her as she curled her arms against her chest. Her shawl had fallen down across her shoulders, leaving her gray hair uncovered. The brothers turned away, unwilling to watch her tears, as they had turned away that summer of the Great Fever when they learned that their great-aunt Andreth mourned a doomed love for an immortal elven lord. As they had as small boys, they pretended not to hear her weeping, guarding her grief with silence.

“I was not yours; you were not mine. I cannot call to you, nor claim yours as mine.”

  


**Author's Note:**

> The inspiration, The Tale of Meng-Jiang Nyu:
>
>> ...A wife’s devotion can sometimes move mountains. Wailing bitterly, Meng-Jiang Nyu cried out to the heaven. The sun vanished behind threatening clouds. A violent tempest churned up the powdery sand, and rain fell in icy sheets. Bolts of lightning streaked through the sky. With a deafening clap of thunder, a section of the wall collapsed, bricks and stones spilling out together with human bones and skulls.  
“Do not be alarmed, brave wife of Chi-liang. Heaven has witnessed your sorrow. You will seek out your husband’s bones from among all the others.” The words were sharp and clear, but there was not a soul in sight. Meng-Jiang Nyu stood transfixed amid the pile of rubble.  
“But how will I know which among the many are his?”  
“Have no fear. You will succeed, for when love is sincere and true, two people become as one. They share thoughts, hopes, and feelings. Their blood, their bones, their very tissues mingle. Do not despair, you will find a way.”  
“Alas,” moaned Meng-Jiang Nyu. “In this jumble lying here, strewn this way and that, are the bones of Chi-liang. Oh mountains, hills, desert of yellow sands,” she pleaded, “favor me, and give me a sign that I may recognize those that belong to him. I cannot choose for I cannot tell one from another.” Unaware of what she was doing, she bit down on her thumb until she drew blood. She watched a drop fall upon a bone, slide off the surface, and reach the ground. Suddenly the words she had just heard took on meaning.  
“If the bones are Chi-liang’s, my blood will mingle with his and sink into them. If the bones belong to others, the blood will remain apart.”  
This time, with determination, she bit down harder and then shook her hand, spattering blood about. What she hoped for did not happen. Again, and still again, she tried. Each time her blood slid quickly off the bones. “One last time,” she told herself. Though the pain brought tears to her eyes, she bit down with all her might. The blood flowed freely and she flung it as far and as wide as she could. One quivering red dot landed on a bone lying apart from the others. At once the blood sank into its chalky whiteness. This bone must belong to Chi-liang. Of this she was certain. Feverishly she continued to search, and soon she recovered the rest. Chi-liang’s bones would receive a proper burial, and his soul would not have to wander aimlessly in search of peace.  
Laden with the heavy blow fate had dealt her, Meng-Jiang Nyu turned to the south and began her sad journey homeward.


End file.
